Quote:
Originally Posted by TJ D
We prefer a quieter setting with good security.
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The cheapest, wich also happens to have all the amenities of a big city and the largest choice in ship chandlers, is
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The setting is one of a large city in a large harbour however, and every visitor gets kicked out for the
ARC anyway from September on. But you can still
anchor in the harbour for a fee. If you need to buy stuff for your
boat it’s still one of the best places.
But otherwise I’d recommend you stay away from Gran Canaria altogether during
Atlantic crossing season. Everthing is full and usually jovial staff are now stressed and unpleasant.
The
displacement of local boats for the
ARC plus the massive arrival of non-ARC crossers means that pretty much every marina from Lanzarote to Tenerife gets overcrowded. Try your luck in La Gomera and La Palma instead for “a quieter setting.”
Garachico on the north of Tenerife may still be to your liking. It’s a new marina out of the beaten paths and therefore maybe not overcrowded in fall and
winter.
Our favorite is to
anchor in La Graciosa, the only really good anchorage in all of the
Canaries, but still open from west to south.
Note that for all the public
marinas it is now mandatory to book online. You can’t just show up anymore.
Security is acceptable anywhere. Always lock your
boat when you leave it and keep valuable
equipment inside. Bicycles are especially likely to disappear in big cities especially if they look nice. Remove the saddle,
wheel, whatever, whenever you leave it behind in town and use the heaviest lock you can find. We had our bags stolen on the beach once and a
fender that we used as a buoy at the end of our trip line dissapeared overnight too for the one time we used it as such.
It’s very rare to hear about theft inside a marina though, but it happens. Exceptionally, bicycles dissapeared from a gated
dock in
Las Palmas this year. There are very regular police patrols but they can’t prevent everything. So always take maximum precautions against theft every moment and for everything of value and you can then rest nearly fully assured that nothing’s going to happen.